There are four types of people on social media: the scroller, the reader, the sharer, and the doer. The titles of each name are self-explanatory. Christina Morgan, the founder of Paw Works in Ventura County, California, is most definitely a doer.
Morgan saw a Facebook post about an 18-year-old dog named Jaripo. The senior dog was at the Lancaster Animal Shelter, described by Morgan as a high-kill shelter. The social media post was a plea for help to see if anyone would come forward to adopt Jaripo. If not, they were going to put him down. The post was accumulating a collection of retweets, reposts, tagged names and 317 Facebook likes, angry-face emoji likes, and sad-face emoji likes. Jaripo’s rescue post was gathering a stream of social media emotions but no one was physically getting into their cars and rescuing the poor pup from his soon-to-be death sentence.
Until Morgan was tagged in the post. “I get tagged in a lot of stuff on Facebook and I saw that this little (dog) was breaking the internet,” she tells The Dodo. “Lots of people were tagging me. All the rescues were looking at it. But no one was really taking action – and that’s a high-kill shelter.”
Morgan knew Jaripo’s life was on the line and time was against him. “I just said, ‘To hell with it,'” Morgan shares with The Dodo. “It’s pouring rain. My husband’s like, ‘Are you nuts?'”
Just as any great doer would do is what she did. Morgan loaded up her car and started her two-hour drive to meet Jaripo. On her drive, she tried notifying the Lancaster Animal Shelter to let them know she was on the way but received a frustrating response. “They said, ‘If he needs to be put to sleep we will do that,'” she reported to The Dodo.
This only made Morgan drive faster through the rain. Morgan was determined. Nothing was going to stop her from meeting Jaripo- not the rain, not bad news from the shelter staff, not time and definitely, not distance.
Morgan arrived there just in time. She took Jaripo home that day. A veterinarian confirmed that Jaripo’s health was strong. Due to old age, he had some pain in his spine and hips and needed some dental work done. There were no terminal health conditions, only a busy animal shelter that had to put down the old to make room for the new.
Jaripo will now live the rest of his days with a foster family set up by Morgan and Paw Works. “He’s a happy camper,” Morgan says.
Morgan not only saved Jaripo but had loaded her car with extra crates to save other animals that were scheduled to be put to sleep. “I ended up leaving with a cat with a bullet in him, this old dog and four other dogs,” Morgan shared with The Dodo.
Including Jaripo’s, Morgan saved the lives of six other animals, all who were in healthy conditions. Thank you, Morgan for being compassionate and “nuts.” We all need to live life performing more actions of love, especially during moments where it is needed the most.
Support Morgan and Paw Works in rescuing other animals in need of a home by making a donation here.
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